From 1996 to 2017 over 200,000 Americans died from Oxycontin and other prescription painkiller overdoses. Think it’s a coincidence that 1996 was the year Oxycontin was put on the market? Me Neither!!! What makes this worse is this number is vastly underestimated. 200,000 deaths only take into consideration people who died from Oxycontin or prescription painkiller overdose. It doesn’t factor in all the people who died from heroin and other drug overdoses. The CDC estimates that 400,000 people have died from opioid (painkillers, heroin, fentanyl, morphine) overdoses between 1999-2017. 400,000!!! That means 800,000 parents will never see their kids again. Tens of thousands of kids will never see their parents again. One family bears the brunt of the responsibility for this epidemic. The Sackler Family. 
**A family put up a billboard showing their son who died from Oxycontin, to help raise awareness.
Blood Money
The Sackler family tries to distance itself from the company that they created, the company that has amassed the majority of their $14 billion dollar net worth: Purdue Pharma.
Around the world, you will see and hear about the contributions the Sackler family has made to major universities, museums, hospitals, etc. They are widely known for their philanthropy including The Sackler Wing at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Sackler Courtyard at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Sackler Museums at Harvard and Peking Universities, and The Sackler Wing at the Louvre just to name a few. All of these donations were and continue to be made with the intention of clearing their name.
All of these donations were funded primarily with money made from the sale of one drug; Oxycontin. The Sackler family was worth hundreds of millions in the nineties, but the real money did not start pouring in until Purdue Pharma released Oxycontin in 1996. Oxycontin has reportedly generated some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue for Purdue Pharma. I don’t think we can get the full effect when the number is written out so just to be clear that is $35,000,000,000 in revenue from oxycontin. The sad part is that this number continues to rise every year because Purdue is still allowed to make boatloads of money from oxycontin.
Just Crush It Dude
2002, my good buddy and I were going to buy weed from a drug dealer named Mike. Mike who was 21-22 at the time was known to always have an array of different drugs on him. When we walked in his apartment off of Goodman st, he had a garbage bag filled with prescription pill bottles. We got an eighth of weed but before we left one sentence would change my life forever. “yo $25 I’ll hook you guys up, you got to try this shit, you two can split this pill and get the best high you’ve ever had”. My eyes lite up like the first time I saw the inside of a playboy magazine.
Like all good drug dealers Mike was kind, caring, and genuinely concerned for our well being, so as we were walking out the door he said: “yo don’t take a full one guys, Just crush it dude and snort like half or something, or I guess you can do the whole thing if you want to get really messed up”. As you can see Mike knew his stuff, he was basically a doctor without the letters before his name. We didn’t snort it, but that night we crushed the pill up and each swallowed half the powder with some water.
The Best Itch Ever
Over the next 8-10 hours, I was unable to move much on my own. I felt like the air had been replaced with Jello and every movement was impossibly hard to make, but I was in heaven. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t walk, it didn’t matter that I threw up 3 times, it didn’t matter that I was itching my body like I had a bad case of scabies, what mattered was that everything felt great. The itching felt awesome, even throwing up was not a big deal it actually felt mildly pleasurable. All the cares in life were gone. All the b.s. pressures the average 15-year-old faces were gone. I loved it!!!
Over the next 5 years, I did oxycontin about 5 times. Then in 2008, a football injury would bring Oxycontin back into my life, and this time a real doctor and real pharmacy would become my drug dealers. The Oxycontin seed had already been planted in my brain after the first use. Now in 2008, when I heard the doctor say Oxycontin my brain thought of that great carefree feeling.
Purdue Pharma
Purdue Pharma is a privately held company founded in 1892 by medical doctors John Purdue Gray and George Frederick Bingham in Manhatten as the Purdue Frederick Company.
In 1952, the company was sold to three brothers Raymond, Mortimer, and Arthur Sackler. who relocated the business to Yonkers, NY. Since 1952 the company has opened additional offices in New Jersey and Connecticut. The headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut.
Purdue Pharma says they focus on pain management medication, calling itself a “pioneer in developing medications for reducing pain, a principal cause of human suffering”. What they don’t say is that they will sell any drug no matter how addicting as long as they can keep raking in the $$.
History Of Lies
The Sackler Family has a history of deceptive campaigns to push their drugs to more doctors and eventually to more patients. In the 1960s, Arthur was contracted by Roche to develop an advertising strategy for a new anti-anxiety medication called Valium. This created a real challenge for Arthur because the effects of Valium were nearly identical to those of Librium, another Roche tranquilizer that was already being sold.
Arthur realized he could not try to sell Valium as a better Librium so he created a term called “psychic tension.” Librium was being prescribed for general anxiety, Arthur now lumped dozens of ailments under his new “psychic tension” term and touted how Valium could treat them all. He would explain to doctors how everything from insomnia to gastrointestinal disease was caused by “psychic tension” and valium was the answer for “psychic tension”, hence Valium should be prescribed for basically everything. After this aggressive deceitful advertising campaign Valium became the most widely prescribed medicine in America for a number of years.
If It Aint Broke Don’t Fix It
In 1995 Purdue and the Sackler Family got FDA approval for their new pain medication Oxycontin. When they ran into problems they took a page out of Arthurs playbook.
Purdue was marketing Oxycontin as a pain medication that lasts 12 hours. During clinical trials, patients reported that the effects of the drug were wearing off after 6-8 hours. Even after being warned about this the Sackler Family and Purdue did not change the label or the marketing campaign for Oxycontin.
Thousands of people who were prescribed Oxycontin over the next decade would need to take 3-4 pills a day to get pain relief. Well, the problem was the doctors were only prescribing them 2 pills a day because it was supposed to last 12 hours right? The Sacklers did not care as long as Oxycontin pills were flying off the shelves. Many of the patients were running out of their 30-day prescription after only 20 days, this meant they needed to get more from somewhere else.
I have had people ask me questions like “So why couldn’t they just wait until the next time they see their doctor, or until the next month’s script comes through?” Oxycontin is a very powerful opioid. When a person takes an opioid for any sustained period of time and then abruptly stops they will go through severe withdrawal symptoms. Check out my article on Heroin Detox: The First 30 Days, which will give you the basic idea of how opioid withdrawal feels.
Oxycontin Withdrawal Is Just As Bad As Heroin Withdrawal
**Just a side note from personal experience: Oxycontin withdrawal is just as bad if not worse than heroin withdrawal. Heroin is cut by the drug dealers with fake powder and chemicals and a bunch of other junk. Oxycontin is a legal pure form of heroin. Look at the chemical makeup of Oxycontin Vs. Heroin, they both turn into the same compound of morphine when they pass the blood-brain barrier. **
Along with not changing the label the other major deception in the Oxycontin marketing scheme was the power of Oxycontin. During and after the Vietnam war morphine got a reputation for being the strong painkiller that people got when they were either really hurt or dying. But during test experiments when people were offered morphine for regular problems like back and neck problems they refused because public opinion was that morphine was only for those about to die.
The Lies Continue
Richard Sackler knew this and devised the second part of the Oxycontin marketing plan to tell doctors that since it had a time-release coating on the pill Oxycontin was less powerful and less addictive than morphine. This was a flat out lie!!! Not only was oxycontin more powerful and addictive than morphine, but Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers knew that to take the time-release coating off the pill was as easy as getting it wet for 2 seconds. We used to take the time-release coating off the pill by swishing it around it our mouths for about 3 seconds and just rubbing it off…that’s how easy it was.
Only after thousands had already died and they were fined $600 Million dollars did Purdue Pharma succumb to the political pressures and change the formula of Oxycontin. In 2010 the FDA approved a new formula of Oxycontin still made by Purdue Pharma, but now it had a new and improved tamper-proof time-release coating.
I will admit that the new formula was a lot harder to snort or inject but we addicts found a way. Also by this point, it didn’t matter much, all the people who were using Oxycontin regularly were already addicted to opiates.
The Sacklers Are In All Decisions
Internal e-mails and memos have been unsealed in recent years showing high-level Sackler family executives pressing sales reps to push oxycontin harder. Richard Sackler was known to press his reps to find ways to sell more pills even if they had to make up words to twist the truth from doctors.
Richard Sackler sent out an internal e-mail that has just been unsealed in the criminal lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts against Purdue Pharma and Names 8 members of the Sackler Family as personally responsible for engineering the opioid crisis. His internal e-mail said “WE NEED TO SHIFT BLAME FROM US TO THE DOCTORS AND THE USERS”.”WE HAVE TO HAMMER ON THE ABUSERS IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE, THEY ARE THE CULPRITS AND THE PROBLEM.”
Well, Richard Sackler how about someone switches your blood pressure medicine with Fentanyl and when you get addicted we blame you!!!
A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
Richard Sackler you are the devil in human form. I hope you spend the rest of your miserable life in prison and then answer to your maker for the 400,000 deaths you and your family are personally responsible for! In my personal opinion, the Sackler Family should have to all take Oxycontin 80mg pills twice a day for 2 months and then see how their lives spiral out of control.
After I started using Oxycontin on a regular basis it hijacked my brain. Doctors have shown in MRI’s and CT scans how a long term opioid user’s brain gets rewired and oxy becomes part of their survival mechanisms. Mice who were put on Oxycontin for a 6 week period and then had the choice of food/water or Oxycontin choose Oxycontin 8/10 times. That means the mice’s brain tells them they need opioids to survive over food/water, And the Sacklers say their product is less addictive than morphine and other painkillers, yea right!!!
Justice? Nope
As I write this, 36 states have filed lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family. There are more than 600 active Lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family. Purdue paid $600 million in a 2007 lawsuit where they had to plead guilty to misleading and deceiving doctors and patients. Oxycontin has earned their company an estimated $35 BILLION and that’s just one pill. They should be fined all $35 billion and sent to prison!!!
I have spent the last 11 years of my life fighting addiction, which all started with Oxycontin. I am clean now but it is a struggle on a daily basis. Thank you Sackler Family for being more concerned with money than people’s lives. Thank you for being so greedy that you continue the Oxycontin lie to this day. I hope you all answer to the families of the 400,000 people you have killed. And let’s not forget the additional 150 that die every day in this country from drug overdoses!!!